Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 70mm, 1/200 at f 2.8, ISO 100, hand held with flash. Because we love our time at home so much, quite a lot of this photo blog illustrates the little domestic details of life…we don’t have many big stories to tell, I work very hard and that’s in the public domain widely enough, so it’s nice to put things onto these pages that are the small grace notes of our real life, behind closed doors. Marie’s heels gently tapping on the floor being one of those grace notes…

And as always our cat – who frequently inhabits this blog – was nearby, finding somewhere new to get comfortable:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 24mm, 1/400 at f 4.5, ISO 100, hand held with flash. It’s a battered old magazine box, one of c.200 places Jesse knows, within these four walls, which provides safe haven from people.

By now he’s used to his geeky Dad zooming in and trying to take pictures which show every tiny hair on his face:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 24mm, 1/200 at f 2.8, ISO 100, hand held with flash. Such a peaceful day. As I write this, Marie and her Mum Bev are wrestling with some dodgy bolts as they build the baby’s new cot, which arrived flat-packed from Mamas and Papas. By way of contrast with the harmonious scenes shown in this blog, the bad language coming from the other end of the room … “these ******* allen keys were designed by a *****!” … is pretty spectacular. Good work, girls, I’ll do the blog, you build the furniture. Today my role is to stay out of the way and boil frequent kettles. Upstairs, dad in law John is laying the wooden floor in the extremely, extremely pink baby’s bedroom. If that child is born with a widgey, instead of a hamburger, then we’re not changing it and he’ll just have to grow up in pink, widgey or no widgey.

Here’s Jesse having a yawn on our bedroom windowsill:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 38mm, 1/1600 sec at f 4, ISO 200, hand held no flash. I submit this to the global wildlife image bank and trust my fellow photo bloggers will give it the respect it deserves.

Here’s Jess posing for me while I practice my HDR techniques:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/2500 sec at f 4, ISO 200, hand held no flash. I’m a novice at HDR, but twiddled with Photomatix Pro until I got something fairly tidy. It’s nice, as windowsill shots of a cat go, and 21 March 2009 (The Ides Of March) was a lovely morning. Note house with conservatory in the background – we nearly bought that one instead, but we’re so glad we didn’t. Ours has a much nicer view out the back…

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 4, ISO 1000, hand held no flash. Just a silly quick extreme wide angle shot, mucking around in the kitchen. After eighteen months, five cats plus a stray, and two puppy dogs, our cheapest, smallest, toughest cat is the last man standing. We’ve lost two, sold four and given away one (Lucy the stray cat who became an honourary member of our zoo). We made a net loss in cash terms, but net gains all over the place in other ways… memories, no small amount of sadness and frustration, and lots and lots of love. And hairs. It all followed a sad event in our lives in late summer 2007… the pets helped us, especially Marie. Jesse was a farm kitten, twenty quid, he never took any nonsense from any of the others, and now they’re all gone (making room for the baby), he’s become the focal point. Tiny cat, lovely big character.

Instead she got Charlie. He could be handsome, he could be ugly. Nobody knows:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held with flash. Crazy wide-angle stuff, me taking pictures on the floor (again), Charlie was inches away from licking the lens (again), I kept chucking him back across the lawn to take a picture but the plucky bugger kept coming back. I don’t think he’d had a proper play with someone for a while, Jean’s been worn out already (and she’d only had him 8 weeks). Any road, I love this picture, the foreground’s blurry, the top of his bonce is over exposed and the background’s cluttered, but to me it’s got a disorganised cheerfulness which utterly suits Charlie himself.

What Charlie is, is a Shih Tzu, the oldest and smallest of the Tibetan dogs (he’s one of the smallest in Royston, South Yorkshire too).

Jean, apparently they live up to 18 years…

Charlie, less than four months old when I took these pictures, takes his new alpha male duties seriously. Here, he guards Jean’s back door:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 5, ISO 400, hand held with flash. Yes it’s been a while since Jean painted her back door, but it’s very photogenic and I believe Charlie is fine with it. Great fun taking pictures with the Sigma wide angle lens, you can get very, very close and still get it crisp, lens-licking permitting.

If you’ve seen Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, you’ll notice Charlie has a certain Ewok quality:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 17mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.3, ISO 200, hand held with flash. On this day, I played with Charlie while Marie and Jean had a one-hour circular conversation in which Jean repeated the phrase “ah don’t think he’s going to get much bigger” nine or ten times. And she’s probably right, Charlie won’t be jumping the high fences at Crufts, and he is just a tad over-enthusiastic about life for Jean’s tastes. A lovely wee companion, yes, but where’s the Off switch? Somewhere under all that hair, Jean, along with a face. Good luck, Charlie. Good luck, Jean.

Charla Nash was nearly eaten alive by a pet chimpanzee named Travis owned by Sandra Herold of Stamford CT. She was so close to death and so terribly mangled that first responders could not tell the sex of the victim lying face down on the ground. Medical personnel and police officers needed post-traumatic  counseling to help ease their experience with the tragedy. We learn now that Ms. Nash has been transferred to The Cleveland Clinic face transplant department providing some hope that, in their skilled hands (they performed the first U.S. face transplant) she may be returned to some semblance of normalcy.

(Update June 11, 2011: Charla Nash has received a full face transplant at Brigham and  Women’s Hospital in Boston and is expected to regain facial movement and sense of taste and smell. However  efforts to transplant new hands to replace those destroyed in the attack failed due to complications.)

In a remarkably similar event four years ago St/.James Davis, a California man,  was attacked by a chimp at a wildlife sanctuary. Davis  has never fully recovered from the attack, and most likely never will. Some 60 surgeries were needed for his massive injuries described in the NY Daily News:

….his nose and mouth were ripped off, an eye was gouged out, his left foot was mangled and most of his fingers and buttocks were devoured….He was in a medically induced coma for months….

Almost four years later, Davis said the news of Nash’s attack last week hit him hard.

The Connecticut woman was visiting friend Sandra Herold in Stamford on Monday when Herold’s pet chimp, Travis, suddenly went wild. Nash was badly mauled before cops shot and killed Travis. Nash has been transferred to an Ohio hospital for extensive reconstruction.

“It’s so much like my story,” Davis said.

“I hoped it would never happen again,” he said, sitting on an electric wheelchair with a prosthetic nose hanging lopsided over two thin red cavities where his own nose used to be. “She probably can’t talk. I couldn’t even grunt. But she needs to hear voices she knows.”

h/t Pat Dollard

St. James Davis

We wrote a few days ago about the horrific chimp attack in Stamford CT in which a woman was nearly killed by an enraged pet chimpanzee. The story has gone viral; the NY Post has been running with it all week. This Sean Delonas NY Post cartoon yesterday brought publicity hound Al Sharpton and New York governor David Patterson into the fray:

NY Post, Sean Delonas

Sharpton is quoted in Newsday saying the cartoon is “troubling at best” while Patterson meanwhile, having been briefed with a verbal description of the cartoon, said “Images of black people portrayed as primates do feed a kind of negative and stereotypical way that some people think.”

NY Post Editor Col Allan’s response: “The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit, the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declined comment on the controversy saying he, like Gov Patterson, had not seen the cartoon but used the opportunity to diss the NY Post as unnewsworthy. Predictably, protests began (photo gallery); below New York state senator Eric Adams protests at the NY Post headquarters:

State Senator Eric Adams, Newsday Photo

The chimpanzee attack and public response has revived the old stereotype of white folks thinking of black folks in simian terms. While there can be a racist aspect to such characterizations, it depends after all, on the context as is the case with the NY Post cartoon. The American Bush hating Left had no hesitation in depicting Geroge W. Bush as a chimp when they pleased: (the following appeared at Steady Habits, 5/19/08)

Bush Chimp vs Obama Chimp….

How come this is OK…..

…But this isn’t….

A bunch of people in Marietta, Georgia were protesting this one; it is a tee shirt sold by a bar owner who says he has no racist intent, merely thinks the resemblance between Obama and Curious George is humorous. I agree, the big ears, the big smile, uncanny! Look what “W” had to put up with going on 8 years. What do you think?

Video here, “how African-Americans have been deplicted“
Funny video here where TV interviewer tries to get seller to admit he’s racist. It doesn’t work!

More about this at:

Wizbang, Doctor Bullldog & Ronin

Sandra Herold & Travis: A Happier time

Updates added Tuesday 2/17: Gruesome details at Gateway Pundit and Threats Against Pet Owner WCBS-TV

Stamford CT February 16, 2009: (Hartford Courant)

Officers were called to a house on Rockrimmon Road after the owner lost control of the 175-pound primate, which was shot and killed by a responding officer when it tried to get into his cruiser, police said….. the owner called 911 and tried to stop the attack by stabbing the chimpanzee with a butcher knife…As emergency crews arrived to treat the victim, the chimpanzee… revived and opened the door of one of the police cruisers. The officer inside fired several shots, killing the chimp…The 15-year-old chimpanzee was well-known around Stamford because he rode around in trucks belonging to the towing company operated by his owners. Police have dealt with him in the past, including an incident in 2003 when he escaped from his owners’ vehicle in downtown Stamford for two hours.

What is going on with these pet owners? There is no shortage of incidents involving persons harboring large exotic pets. Here, at least, the public and the police knew of this hazard and allowed it to continue. Photo below shows Travis opening the police car door.

Last night, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services confirmed the dead birds were part of a USDA program to reduce the European starling population. Donna Leusner said the state health department was not part of the culling program but had been notified of plans to feed the birds a “controlled substance.”

From the Associated Press via Fox News:

FRANKLIN, N.J. —  The black carcasses of dead starlings still pepper the snowy roads and lawns of central New Jersey’s rural Griggstown community three days after federal officials used a pesticide to kill as many as 5,000 of the birds.

Many residents Monday were still getting over their shock from the sudden spate of deaths. Some were unaware that the deaths resulted from an intentional culling and that the pesticide used was harmless to people and pets.

“It was raining birds,” said Franklin Township Mayor Brian Levine. “It got people a little anxious.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture called local police last week and the Somerset County Health Department to warn them that a culling program was under way, but there was no notice that dead birds could fall from the sky, Levine said.

“A lot of us are concerned because it’s so odd,” said Chris Jiamboi, 49, as his vehicle idled along a stretch of road in Griggstown marked with the flattened remains of dead starlings. “There were a lot of them dead in the roads and no one drives fast enough around here to kill a bird. Then they started showing up dead in people’s backyards.”

All about European Starlings: (excerpt)

All the European Starlings in North America descended from 100 birds released in New York’s Central Park in the early 1890s. A group dedicated to introducing America to all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s works set the birds free. Today, European Starlings range from Alaska to Florida and northern Mexico, and their population is estimated at over 200 million birds.

European Starling

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held with flash. This was pretty much as it came out of the camera, I darkened a touch but I was in experimental mode and found that aiming the SB-800 flash straight at them created this striking, low-key portrait effect.

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 20mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200 hand held with flash. Location: under the sideboard in the hallway.

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 13mm, 1/60 sec at f 4.5, ISO 200, hand held with flash. Heavily (and clumsily) retouched but what the hell, it’s just a snapshot. It’s just as well Billy’s not a Saint Bernard.

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm at 29mm, 1/160 at f2.8, ISO 1600, hand held no flash. Sharpened considerably in Paint Shop Pro, although the results in natural light at ISO 1600 were pretty good out of the camera.

Billy loses the cone on Monday, three days before Christmas. To be honest he’s perfectly able to lick his bits cone or no cone, and has adapted to cone life very well. It’s an effective weapon with which to entrap and subdue his young sister Poppy, and when he’s eating it gives him a private space on the floor into which no cat or dog can enter.

Caged Cats Being Trucked to Market

We wrote about animal cruelty in China some months ago before the summer Olympic games.While  the practice of skinning alive cats and dogs for human consumption has been a subject of extreme concern to animal lovers worldwide, the issue seemed to warrant scant attention from people in China; until now. Yahoo news reports today on a citizen protest within China:

BEIJING – A southern Chinese province must stop the “shameful” and “cruel slaughter” of cats for food, a group of more than 40 animal lovers in Beijing said Thursday as they unfurled banners in a tearful protest.

Thousands of cats across the country have been caught in the past week by traders and transported to Guangdong province to be killed for food, said the protesters gathered at the Guangdong government’s office in Beijing.

“We are very angry because the cats are being skinned and then cooked alive. We must make them correct this uncivilized behavior,” said Wang Hongyao, who represented the group in submitting a letter to the Guangdong office.

Here are some links to earlier articles about this shameful activity: Doggie Pawss and  Salon

Nikon D300, Nikon 70-300mm VR lens at 230mm, 1/800 sec at f5.5, hand held no flash, VR on. Saturation slightly boosted and sharpened.

You’ll see a lot more of Billy, and Beefy, and of our numerous other pets, in this blog no doubt.

I am not a single issue voter and I support Sarah Palin for numerous reasons above and beyond the single issue of Alaska’s Fish and Game laws. However, I would certainly wish to confront the McCain/Palin administration on this issue when they take office. Some of the history of the controversy I discuss below.

The question of predator control involving aerial shooting of wolves and other animals is a contentious one in Alaska and, indeed, in the lower 48. Animal rights organizations are furious with Governor Sarah Palin for her support of Alaska bill HB 256/SB 176 the intent of which was “Clarify, Clean UP Statutes, Encourages Abundance-Based Management“. The Defender of Wild Life Action Fund states:

“Governor Palin is an active promoter of Alaska’s aerial hunting program whereby wolves and bears are shot from the air or chased by airplanes to the point of exhaustion before the pilot lands the plane and a gunner shoots the animals point blank.”

Before Alaska statehood in 1959, shooting wolves from airplanes was common. Aerial sport hunting was banned in 1972, but the law allowed aerial shooting for predator control.

In 1996 and 2000, voters rejected using aircraft to help track and kill wolves. The Legislature, in both cases, caved in to special interest groups and overturned the measures.

Nick Jans, co-sponsor of Ballot Measure 2, expects victory again in the Aug. 26 primary election. Alaskans for Wildlife collected nearly 57,000 signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. Defenders of Wildlife, a national wildlife conservation group, is one of its principal supporters.

“This is an issue that has been addressed and addressed again. It is a clear matter. The will of the people has already been known and we are just reasserting it here,” Jans said. “We are both puzzled and enraged that we are back at this point again.” Source

Unfortunately, this years measure did not pass; it was rejected by the voters 56%-44%. Ultimately this is an issue that will have to be settled by the citizens of the state through interaction with their legislators. Governor Palin has had to consider all of the competing interests and come down on the side of what is best for her state in the long run. In May 2007 Palin

” introduced a bill in the State House and Senate that will simplify and clarify Alaska’s intensive management law for big game and the state’s “same day airborne hunting” law. “I have said many times that my administration is committed to management of game for abundance, and to a proactive, science-based predator management program where appropriate,” said the Governor. “The bill I am introducing will give the Board of Game and state wildlife managers the tools they need to actively manage important game herds and help thousands of Alaskan families put food on their tables”

Aerial hunting is illegal under federal law (the Airborne Hunting Act of 1972) but Alaska has managed to circumvent the ban by a loophole.

“For more than 30 years, the state of Alaska has attempted to circumvent the intent of the Airborne Hunting Act by exploiting a loophole in the law allowing states to “administer” wildlife using aircraft. Under the guise of wildlife management, Alaska contends its current aerial hunting program is not hunting at all but constitutes legitimate wildlife management that artificially boosts wild moose and caribou populations.”

The loophole allows:

…for predator control, permitting state employees or licensed individuals to shoot from an aircraft for the sake of protecting “land, water, wildlife, livestock, domesticated animals, human life, or crops.” Source

Tags: sarah palin,alaska aerial shooting,aerial predator control,wolf shooting,wolf hunting,alaska ballot question 2,alaska legislature

I don’t have my copy of “An Exaltation of Larks” handy but I have consulted some other sources and can find no reference to “committees” as a name for a group of “buzzards”, or more accurately, vultures. Here’s a link to a drawing from Florida show one such “committee” awaiting the decomposition of an alligator. In another photo we see the “committee chairman” at lunch. More “buzzard” news:

h/t lvn600 for Black Vulture shot; a handsome specimen. (click here for full size)

Nightingale

In an earlier posting we noted that one species (Great Tits) of British birds was coping quite well with alleged climate warming. A report today in The Independent (U.K.) shows that, while many British birds are declining in numbers, others are increasing. Causative factors in decline included intensification of agriculture causing loss of farmland birds such as grey partridge and corn bunting; changing woodland management methods, increased deer populations, predation by grey squirrels, and problems on wintering grounds in Africa of migratory species as causes of declines in woodland birds. (willow tit -77%, wood warbler -67% etc).

Changes in vegetative undergrowth caused by deer browsing is listed as the most likely factor in the decline of woodland birds. The nation is seeing a rapid increase in deer population led by the muntjac, an introduced tropical deer.

The good news, however, is reserved for the so called garden variety birds: many are exhibiting substantial increases in numbers probably due to backyard feeding and warmer winters: (oh, oh there’s that climate warming bugaboo again!) great tit +55%, goldfinch +39%.

River Paddle

July 12, 9 a.m.

Last year’s event was great fun!

Departure from Harbor Park at 9 a.m. to catch the end of the flood tide, so that we will be in the Floating Meadows at high tide. Professor Barry Chernoff will offer short talks on river ecology along the way. If you plan to attend and if you wish to be informed in case of cancellation due to weather, email Hall.john.c@sbcglobal.net

Ha! The Redcoats were hardly mosquitoes! Actually our founders were the mosquitoes and piss ants that won the day and our freedom.

News articles today (here and video here) about a Long Island woman, infested with bird mites, who was taken from her home in a HazMat suit and put in quarantine isolation gave me quite a jolt. The woman was most likely infested by mites from an abandoned bird nest in her bathroom vent.

While I don’t have any of the horrific symptoms of this type of bird mite infestation I live in close proximity to birds and regularly feed them. Birds, mainly sparrows and starlings, nest in the eaves, gutters and crannies of my house and I have several feeders on my porch. Doctors are quoted in the stories saying that, although the bird mites can cause extreme discomfort to humans they don’t feed on humans, only attacking them when their bird host dies or leaves the nest.

Several websites (here and here) dealing with these pests strongly disagree with that assessment saying there are numerous instances of people driven to the brink of suicide by total household and personal infestation depriving them of sleep, causing constant torment. One man bought a parakeet in the hope that the mites would attack the bird and leave him alone. They got the poor bird alright, attacking it so hard that it had to be put down, but the pests remained in the home. Below is a photograph of a Northern fowl mite, one of several type of bird mites.

The Long Island woman, Nina Bradica, gave this account of her ordeal:

“My whole shower was covered with them,” said Bradica, 45. “I didn’t even know they were there at first, I was drying myself with my towel in the bathroom. That’s how they got on me.”

One of Bradica’s doctors told CBS 2 HD bird mites can be a very severe problem.

“They can be a nuisance and some people have been infected for years with these bird mites and have had difficulty eradicating them,” said Dr. Kenneth Steier.
Added Dr. Shadab Ahmed of Nassau Medical Center, “They can stick to the body. They are extremely tiny. I just sent three to be tested to the parasitology lab for identification.”

Doctors say there is absolutely no public health hazard. Mites can’t feed off human skin and will eventually drop off, but until then …
Bradica tried to describe her discomfort.

“They do go inside you. They go in your nose. They go in your ears. They go in your mouth.”
she is covered with welts and red bumps and wonders if her home will ever be livable again.

The blog title above is the actual headline from a BBC News article. The discussion is about how some British birds are coping (or not coping for that matter) with climatic changes. The Great Tit, for example is doing quite well, adapting to the earlier arrival of its Winter Moth caterpillar food by laying its eggs earlier. Thus the chicks have abundant food when they hatch. (from the article, emphasis added)

At least one of Britain’s birds appears to be coping well as climate change alters the availability of a key food.

Researchers found that great tits are laying eggs earlier in the spring than they used to, keeping step with the earlier emergence of caterpillars.

Writing in the journal Science, they point out that the same birds in the Netherlands have not managed to adjust.

Understanding why some species in some places are affected more than others by climatic shifts is vital, they say.

Chalk another one up for Global Warming: An increase in world-wide shark attacks on human beans. At least that’s how the Guardian U.K. sees it. The headline screams: Surge in Fatal shark Attacks Blamed on Global Warming.

When you actually read the article you find more compelling reasons for the alleged surge: i.e. increased numbers of peeps recreating in ocean waters and/or overfishing depleting shark food stocks. Finally the money line: “Another contributory factor to the location of shark attacks could be global warming and rising sea temperatures.”

Btw, I would recommend staying out of the water at New Smyrna Beach FL which is called, ” the shark attack capital of the world. It has had more recorded incidents per square mile than any beach on Earth….It’s more like a vicious dog bite, half a dozen stitches, a few bandages, that sort of thing,” said an observer referring to the common 2-3′ black tip sharks doing most of the nipping.

Photo Notes:

Top-Great White and Kayacker

Bottom-Fishing for Black Tip Sharks

Postscript:

Friend Shane writes: “I live in the desert I should be ok unless there are any land shark sightings”

I replied: ” No land sharks, but there are sand sharks. Actually they’re real and lifeguard rescues one.“

Another friend: “Sharks are evil creatures. They do not sleep and a few species have been known to replicate by self induced cloning, if they ever figure out a way to breath on land I say we give up and submit to our new hammerhead masters.”

Me: Evil creatures, nay!

…everyone talks about sharks, not only in connection with shark fin soup and potency products but also because of their mostly predatory habits and their alleged bloodthirsty character. In the process it is forgotten that almost 70% of all currently living sharks are intensely engaged in caring for their young and practice a form of brooding which we usually connect with mammals: To be precise the female keeps her developing eggs in the final section of the oviduct, called the womb or uterus, and following a long gestation period gives birth to fully developed, extremely independent pups, in other words, sharks give birth to living offspring. to be precise, many sharks are viviparous.
Source: Shark Info

Here is a hammerhead female with 15 well-developed pups which were removed from the uterus.

Researchers at Wesleyan University (Middletown CT) and elsewhere are studying birdsong in an effort to better understand human speech disorders. Using Canaries and Zebra Finches as laboratory subjects scientists are using techniques such as MRI, deafening and botox injection to learn more about neuron addition when songs are being learned. One study described as:

…. the first functional MRI study to agree on how vocal sounds are represented within the brain of an awake zebra finch, a well-studied animal model of vocal learning. Because of many similarities between birdsong and human speech, this research could lead to an improved understanding of the cause of stuttering and other speech problems…..The vocal learning process in the zebra finch offers a model system to study the neural and behavioral mechanisms by which humans learn to make sounds. Songbirds such as zebra finches have specialized areas of their brains dedicated to communication. That is why they have been used as animal models to study speech disorders, such as stuttering. It is estimated that more than 3 million Americans stutter.

Prof. John R Kirn at Weleyan’s Biology Department was recently interviewed on the student run radio station WESU-FM (88.1) about his current study of birdsong in the Zebra Finch. A weekly radio program called Faculty Lounge presents each week an hour long interview with a Wesleyan professor. Those interested can download the entire interviews as podcasts. Prof. Kirn’s complete interview can be heard here. I have also made a 10 minute excerpt of an especially interesting part of his interview.

In an ABC story from late last year we learn:

Researchers at Wesleyan University are using botulinum toxin A, marketed under the name of Botox, to study how songbirds are able to pull off a unique miracle in the animal kingdom and regrow the brain cells that die as they age.

They are working under the hypothesis that the key to regeneration of neurons lies in singing, at least for the zebra finch, a small bird of Australian origin that spends its life trying to master the perfect song.

“We’re basically asking the question, is it singing a correct song that matters in terms of regulating this process (of neuro-regeneration)?” says John Kirn, associate professor of biology and chair of the neuroscience and behavior department at Wesleyan.

According to Prof. Kirn the Zebra Finch’s song is not particularly melodious and “sounds somewhat like a car that won’t start”. (short audio here)

The Seattle Times reported on Wednesday about this young (4 year old) bald eagle found sitting on a Federal Way WA sidewalk. The eagle’s appearance drew a sizable crowd of onlookers before a state game warden arrived and netted the bird. Warden Bruce Richards said the eagle appeared undernourished and would be taken to a specialist for rehabilitation.

Photos: John Lok, Seattle Times

A few weeks ago I wrote to a friend:

The ChiComs care only for how they appear to a global audience. Hence their obsession with baby pandas and their present purge of cats. This on top of the routine abuse of animals in China’s fur industries where animals are skinned alive or tourist attractions where unsuspecting cattle are released into a den of lions for the amusement of spectators. I say boycott the China Olympic Games.

In addition to the dispute over Tibet another shadow falls over the upcoming Summer Olympics in China: The blot of extreme animal cruelty displayed in the Chinese treatment of domestic cats and dogs. The Salon blog today features an article by Ted Kerasote depicting the gulf separating our Western view of hearthside pets from the Chinese indifference to the plight of such pets which are routinely tortured and slaughtered for food and/or fur. From the blog (not easy reading!):

Undercover videos taken for Swiss Animal Protection, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Humane Society show Chinese dogs and cats trucked to market without food and water, pulled from their cages, sometimes disemboweled, sometimes bashed on the ground to stun them, then hanged by wires, and skinned alive. These investigations led to a ban on the importation of dog and cat fur from the United States, Australia and a few countries in the Europe Union in the early 2000s. A full EU ban will take effect on Jan. 1, 2009